Transcript Emerging Trends in Academic Publishing

Some Emerging Trends
in Academic Publishing
AAA Committee on the Future of Print and Electronic
Publishing
AAA Editors Conference, November 17 2015
Denver, Colorado
Publishing Oversight Working Group
• The POWG has reviewed and accepted all final fiveyear plans
• Extremely appreciative of the detailed engagement
with the portfolio
• Accessibility: ongoing interest in Open Access but
except for Cultural Anthropology no specific plans
• Breadth: new audiences, some new content types
• Quality: affirmative statements to help position the
portfolio, concrete steps to improve review process
• Sustainability: cumulative efforts the portfolio is on
stronger footing, a difference of nearly $120K
Five-Year Plans as a Group
• All of the five year plans submitted addressed the
substantive concerns identified by CFPEP, and all
were accepted by the POWG and ACC
• Result makes the portfolio significantly stronger as
we enter into the RFP process for the next
publishing contract (or “service level agreement”)
• Please pass along AAA’s thanks to section
leadership and other members of the editorial
team
Trends in the Five-Year Plans
• Lynne and Susan Coutin read every plan
• They noted the following themes:
• Measures to reduce costs
• Measures to raise of shift revenues
• Need for marketing, outreach, and presentation of
relevance
• Innovation in content, format, and structure of journals
• Collaborations
• Continued concerns: improve reach, questioning forprofit publishers, publications revenues, open access
Request for Proposals (RFP)
• Current contract (with Wiley Blackwell) is in place
until December 31, 2017
• In Jan/Feb 2016, AAA will request publishers
provide proposals to begin 2018
• Kaufman Wills Fusting is a publishing consultant
hired to help AAA with RFP
• All final five-year plans were sent to Cara Kaufman
and Fred Fusting to ensure that the RFP reflects as
many of these requirements as possible
Request for Proposals
• Feb 2016 – request proposals
• Apr 2016 – initial proposal review
• May 2016 – select finalists for interviews
• Jun 2016 – receive revised proposals
• Jul 2016 – interview finalists
• Sep 2016 – recommend publishing partner
• Dec 2016 – complete contract negotiations
• Spring 2017 – transition (if needed)
• Dec 2017 – current contract ends
RFP Elements
Introduction
• Introduction, key dates
• About the AAA
• Ownership and contract term
About the AAA portfolio
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Editorial mission & scope
Editors and editorial process
Editorial metrics
Production specifications
Circulation history
Revenue history
Future goals and needs
Publisher’s Proposed Approach
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About the publisher
Management team
Reports and information sharing
Vision, innovation, future investment,
technology platform
• Transition plan
• Financial package
• Template publishing agreement
Related to each title
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Circulation projections
Subscription rates
Digital publishing
Rights and permissions
Support of editors and editorial process
Production
Human resource commitment
Proposal Evaluation – A Package
• Alignment with AAA core publishing values: Quality,
Breadth, Accessibility, Sustainability
• Publisher Profile: location, size, portfolio
• Editorial Support: Editorial management, stipends, metrics,
services
• Production Quality: Specs, vendors, process, speed, color,
archives
• Digital publishing: platform, features, branding
• Dissemination: Rates, global reach, usage, Open Access
policies, HINARI/AGORA/Tribal Colleges
• Communications: Contacts, reporting, meetings
• Strategy and Innovation: Product development, investment
• Terms: Ownership, time, post-termination rights
• Finances: Royalties, guarantees, signing bonus, editorial
Observed Trends Impacting
Scholarly Publishing
• Subscription–based business models have been
under increasing strain
• Calls for open access from funders
• Fewer but larger scholarly and commercial
academic publishers
• Value of collective approaches
• Metrics for the quality of journals shifting
Emerging Trends That May Impact
Scholarly Publishing
• Print-based assumptions and legacy workflows may
not apply to born-digital content; file format
standards are shifting
• Reader overload
• Demand for curated content will likely increase
• Increased diversity of multimedia and interactive
formats
• Alternative peer review forms may make publishing
more process-based
Workflows Are Changing with Born
Digital Content
• Shift from publishing in issues and volumes to
publishing single articles
• Collabra from University of California Press, still
compiles into issues after article-based publishing
• https://royalsociety.org/journals/authors/continuo
us-publication/
• PLoS One uses continuous publishing model
• http://www.plosone.org/#news
• Much faster publication for authors
File Formats
• Without issues, less need for PDF
• PDFs are hard to read on mobile phones and smart
devices, compared to “responsive design” HTML
pages
• Universal design and accessibility (text-to-speech
readers and speech recognition)
• https://journals.hioa.no/index.php/pp/article/view
/869
Reader Overload
• In the four year period between 2006 and early
2010 PLoS ONE published more than 10,000
articles
• In PubMed alone, the rate of growth is
approximately one article per minute
• Arif Jinha of the University of Ottawa estimated
that the total number of journal articles (not
including books and gray literature) was in excess of
50 million articles, and the rate doubles every 24
years
• Currently more than 28,000 journals
Curated Content
• With the increase in digital data and online only
journals and publications, content is more easily
curated
• With more publications online, more information
freely available, and more authors contributing
content, reader needs for filtering will grow
• Curation was historically driven by humans
• AnthroSource is a collection of curated content selected
by editors and their peer-reviewers
• Acquisition librarians purchase and assemble selections
of content in library portals
• Curation may be increasingly be done by software
Curated Content
• Browzine is an example of a tool available to many
in academia through your library
• iPad App that enables you to “shelf” journal
articles, journal issues, mark up a PDF, share it with
a friend
• This approach changes the nature of how scholars
conduct research and result in easy access to
journals in more disciplines
• One no longer needs a file cabinet of articles
Experiments in Open Peer Review
• Prepublication Peer Review: submit manuscript to
external service, receive peer review prior to
submission and assistance in placing manuscript
with one or more journals
• May link to cascading submission systems
• Axios Review: http://axiosreview.org/
• Rubriq: http://www.rubriq.com/
• Peerage of Science:
https://www.peerageofscience.org/
• Placing submissions in front of scholarly community
for open review
Cascading Submission & Review
• Author submits article to most-preferred journal
• If, following review (editorial or peer review), article
is rejected, it is passed to next most preferred
journal
• Article “cascades” from one title to the next in
order of preference until it is accepted
• While some authors do this manually, cascading
systems follow this pattern as a matter of course
• May reduce ‘reviewer burnout’
Open Peer Review
• Internet Archaeology
• Author submits article to journal
• Manuscripts taken through a fairly double-blind
review
• After publication, comments are published
alongside article
• Comments are signed
Interactive Peer Review
Peerage of Science
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Author submits article to journal
Article is opened for discussion of review
Author may respond to reviews or revise
Depending on journal, article and reviews are published,
and in some cases editor decides whether to publish the
revised article in typeset form, with links to the
discussions and reviews
• Results in an increase in the number of ‘objects’
potentially cited for each individual contribution
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry
and Physics
• Article is submitted and assigned to co-editor, and
reviewed for technical issues and fit with journal’s
scope
• Article is published into ACPD discussion area
• Open discussion and comment for 8 weeks
• Author response to all comments within 4 weeks
• Final publication with direct link to preceding
stages in discussion, revision and response
Growth in Variety and Use of
Interactive Elements
• Basic rule: In digital publishing,
multimedia-based content increases
readership
• Good images and videos, as well as
interactive content, can drive internet
traffic as much as written material
Larger Use of Video
• Anthropologists are increasingly using video
to collect data
• Journal of Video Ethnography dedicated to
the format, offers peer-reviewed videos
• Author guidelines indicate that 80% of uploaded
video must be recorded by author/video maker
• Authors grant DePaul a three year non exclusive
license to distribute and display the video
Use of Images and Photos as Basic
Part of Web-based Content
• Increased role in both research and digital
publishing
• Photo essays in Cultural Anthropology and
Medicine Anthropology Theory
• Image+text series in Somatosphere
• Archiving may be unclear right now
Interactive content
• For scholarly journals, this trend is likely a
few years out
• Innovation happening on home pages
• Need to integrate the ability for readers to
click and to share
• This increases viewership & dissemination
• Readers want to do things with the content,
and journals that facilitate this interaction
benefit through increased online readership
Possible Implications for AAA and its sections
• Costs, financing and revenue
• Marketing opportunities for born-digital content
• Opportunities offered by digital tools and
workflows
• Archiving of non-print content
• Relevance of changes to anthropological
community
• Role of AAA and its sections in developing
trends rather than just responding to them
Discussion